Saira Wasim's Holy matrix was painted for the exhibition 'Future tense' at Dell Gallery, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane, 2005. In this work Wasim mixes diverse sources, from satire, Renaissance painting and Mughal miniatures, to create a contemporary allegory. Wasim has written: '[Holy matrix] deals with religious fanaticism being taught in "Madrasa" religious school in Pakistan and many other Muslim countries. It depicts how the blind dogma of ideology transforms human brain and innocent youth being trained as radically subversive military in many parts of the world. Urdu Qa-edah's nonsensical float in air and animals lope in front of central disc to hint how man shapes religious and ideologies for their own political justifications.'¹

The composition is arranged in a circular, anti-clockwise movement around a central disk. The group advances with the figure of a Mullah (a member of the Islamic clergy) who holds a flag on which appears fragmented text from the Urdu Qa-edah. The image of the Mullah is repeated six times, in different manifestations; with each subsequent depiction he becomes increasingly bestial. In his final manifestation, he has the black face and horns of a ram, and cloven feet. The courtly buildings of the background are replaced by a cannon, while the crowd of animals stampede to flee the scene.

In Wasim's images, animals often represent the general public, innocent victims in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of Wasim's images are based on the circus or carnival, and this can be seen in Holy matrix; its circular merry-go-round format satirically exposes the religious leader as an entertainer, simultaneously both ominous and farcical. Significantly, Mullahs are implicated in the persecution of the Ahmadiyya community, a minority group to which Wasim belongs. The artist states: 'Mullahs are creating many problems in our country and no-one can raise a voice against them because people think it is against the religion to (contradict) them.'²

Endnotes

1. Saira Wasim, Email to Suhanya Raffel, 9 September 2005.
2. Saira Wasim, quoted in Ellen Pearlman, 'American effect = death threat: The art of Saira Wasim', The Brooklyn Rail, October 2003, <http://www.thebrooklynrail.org/arts/oct03/sairawasim.html>, viewed 14 December 2005.